I had a hard time understanding this article, so I looked up some German resources and also the original letter linked in the article. Still, the sum is still confusing. Here's what happened:
1. This swiss company got the home addresses of the people by deceiving the court in the first place. They suggested that the people in question were using a file sharing platform, not a streaming website (former is illegal, latter is not).
2. Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people, claiming that "streaming a video" means that you store a video temporarily (or permanently) on your own device, which is infringement of copyright (and utter bullshit, because it isn't according to German law).
3. All in all, they probably got a few bucks out of this trolling, but they are unlikely to be successful in court, because it is not illegal in Germany to consume copyright protected material. You may not provide it (upload it). This would be illegal. But this didn't happen in the first place. The people who should get a cease-and-desist order is RedTube for uploading and streaming copyright protected material.
All articles also talk about this weird software "gladii 1.1.3" without talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place, if you connect to a server (RedTube) and not to a bunch of random peers.
I wonder how. The spoofed domain explanation doesn't make any sense. If you you are able to redirect users to download from your own servers you don't need any additional software to find out their IP address. Maybe what gladii does is to embed code into the movie file itself so it can be used as a honeypot. I'm not familiar with the swf format or whatever they host on redtube to know whether that is possible.
> They didn't send cease and desist letters. As I understand it they asked for money right away.
That’s sort of combined in Germany. You can ask for (reasonable) damages and lawyer fees plus for people to sign a ceae and desist. (Of course, in actuality those letters can ask for anything they want. It just might not hold up in court. That’s why receiving one of those letters as a private person sucks. Those don’t have a lawyer on staff to quickly look those letters over.)
In this case the damages they asked for were €15.50 and the lawyer fees were €234.50 (together €250).
This process exists in Germany to efficiently resolve disputes without having to use the courts (mostly between companies, actually) but when it comes to copyright infringement of private persons one could arguably say that it is abused.
about (2): Streaming of copyright-protected media is generally considered legal, only copying is not. But it's claimed that streaming a file to the flash-player is actually "progressive download" and hence falls under illegal copying. (of course for purely technical copying between buffers, temporary files, ... there's even an exemption in the law (§44a UrhG), but that does not stop the lawyers from trying this reinterpretation).
About "gladii": The most interesting thing are the crosslinks between the companies involved. The company that claims to hold the rights to the porn is "The Archive AG" and the company that claims to have determined the IP addresses of porn-consumers is "itGuards, Inc". Normally the expert-witness should be somewhat independent of the plaintiff, but in this case the websites of both parties have been put on by the same user on the same shared webhost: wix.com (funny enough "wix" in German is a homophone of "to jerk off"). (details: http://blog.kowabit.de/porno-sein/). Also both companies seem to be founded within one week in March 2013, possibly on purpose.
Then maybe another interesting thing about these special "Cease and Desist" ("Abmahnung") letters in Germany: As someone has already mentioned, they have been invented to lower the workload of the courts, so that they don't have to deal with trivialities (basically between businesses, mostly used for/against wrong claims in advertising).
But the crucial thing is: The "fine" the receiver has to pay only is allowed to cover a certain aspect: The actual damage (here: possibly $10 for a porn-movie) and expenditures that the rights-owner had to pay to the lawyer. So if a nice lawyer sends out 100'000 cease-and-desist letters at a flat-rate of $10000 in total, you'd only be allowed to "fine" the receivers $10 for the porn-movie + 10 cent + postage or so. And if the lawyer "fines" the receivers $100 per rights-violation, he technically would have to bill the rights-owner 10 million dollars, even if the cease-and-desist doesn't have any merit, every single receiver would ignore it, and a judge would through the case out. Unfortunately there's no way to force the lawyer or rights-owner to let anyone know about their contracts, but sadly this makes almost every "Abmahnung" an invalid one, even though no one can proove it.
The article below explains that the website of the company which filed the copyright claims and the website of the company which supposedly created the 'gladii' software are hosted on the same server, contain the same user-id's and were created at around the same time.
At the moment most people are wondering how these IP addresses were found. This[0] article indicates that they were using redtube.net to gather the IP addresses and then forwarded to redtube.com. (This might be illegal since it would be them distributing pornographic content.)
Also, the way they were charging their fines is probably illegal and they might lose their license over it. Yes, they charged fines directly, those were not just cease-and-desist letters.
(They might also be using CC-licensed templates on their own website without giving due credit. [1])
Comments
I had a hard time understanding this article, so I looked up some German resources and also the original letter linked in the article. Still, the sum is still confusing. Here's what happened:
1. This swiss company got the home addresses of the people by deceiving the court in the first place. They suggested that the people in question were using a file sharing platform, not a streaming website (former is illegal, latter is not).
2. Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people, claiming that "streaming a video" means that you store a video temporarily (or permanently) on your own device, which is infringement of copyright (and utter bullshit, because it isn't according to German law).
3. All in all, they probably got a few bucks out of this trolling, but they are unlikely to be successful in court, because it is not illegal in Germany to consume copyright protected material. You may not provide it (upload it). This would be illegal. But this didn't happen in the first place. The people who should get a cease-and-desist order is RedTube for uploading and streaming copyright protected material.
All articles also talk about this weird software "gladii 1.1.3" without talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place, if you connect to a server (RedTube) and not to a bunch of random peers.
Edit: Clarification in 1.
>This swiss company got the IP addresses of the people by deceiving the court in the first place.
No, I think the Swiss lawyers provided the IP addresses asking the court to make Deutsche Telekom reveal the users' true identities.
>Then, they sent thousands of cease-and-desist orders to these people
They didn't send cease and desist letters. As I understand it they asked for money right away.
>All articles also talk about this weird software "gladii 1.1.3" without talking about how this software can collect IP addresses in the first place
That is indeed the interesting question. Apparently the court asked an expert to evaluate the software and the expert confirmed that gladii 1.1.3 could do what it claimed: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...
I wonder how. The spoofed domain explanation doesn't make any sense. If you you are able to redirect users to download from your own servers you don't need any additional software to find out their IP address. Maybe what gladii does is to embed code into the movie file itself so it can be used as a honeypot. I'm not familiar with the swf format or whatever they host on redtube to know whether that is possible.
> They didn't send cease and desist letters. As I understand it they asked for money right away.
That’s sort of combined in Germany. You can ask for (reasonable) damages and lawyer fees plus for people to sign a ceae and desist. (Of course, in actuality those letters can ask for anything they want. It just might not hold up in court. That’s why receiving one of those letters as a private person sucks. Those don’t have a lawyer on staff to quickly look those letters over.)
In this case the damages they asked for were €15.50 and the lawyer fees were €234.50 (together €250).
This process exists in Germany to efficiently resolve disputes without having to use the courts (mostly between companies, actually) but when it comes to copyright infringement of private persons one could arguably say that it is abused.
about (2): Streaming of copyright-protected media is generally considered legal, only copying is not. But it's claimed that streaming a file to the flash-player is actually "progressive download" and hence falls under illegal copying. (of course for purely technical copying between buffers, temporary files, ... there's even an exemption in the law (§44a UrhG), but that does not stop the lawyers from trying this reinterpretation).
About "gladii": The most interesting thing are the crosslinks between the companies involved. The company that claims to hold the rights to the porn is "The Archive AG" and the company that claims to have determined the IP addresses of porn-consumers is "itGuards, Inc". Normally the expert-witness should be somewhat independent of the plaintiff, but in this case the websites of both parties have been put on by the same user on the same shared webhost: wix.com (funny enough "wix" in German is a homophone of "to jerk off"). (details: http://blog.kowabit.de/porno-sein/). Also both companies seem to be founded within one week in March 2013, possibly on purpose.
Then maybe another interesting thing about these special "Cease and Desist" ("Abmahnung") letters in Germany: As someone has already mentioned, they have been invented to lower the workload of the courts, so that they don't have to deal with trivialities (basically between businesses, mostly used for/against wrong claims in advertising).
But the crucial thing is: The "fine" the receiver has to pay only is allowed to cover a certain aspect: The actual damage (here: possibly $10 for a porn-movie) and expenditures that the rights-owner had to pay to the lawyer. So if a nice lawyer sends out 100'000 cease-and-desist letters at a flat-rate of $10000 in total, you'd only be allowed to "fine" the receivers $10 for the porn-movie + 10 cent + postage or so. And if the lawyer "fines" the receivers $100 per rights-violation, he technically would have to bill the rights-owner 10 million dollars, even if the cease-and-desist doesn't have any merit, every single receiver would ignore it, and a judge would through the case out. Unfortunately there's no way to force the lawyer or rights-owner to let anyone know about their contracts, but sadly this makes almost every "Abmahnung" an invalid one, even though no one can proove it.
The article below explains that the website of the company which filed the copyright claims and the website of the company which supposedly created the 'gladii' software are hosted on the same server, contain the same user-id's and were created at around the same time.
The whole thing is a scam.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...
At the moment most people are wondering how these IP addresses were found. This[0] article indicates that they were using redtube.net to gather the IP addresses and then forwarded to redtube.com. (This might be illegal since it would be them distributing pornographic content.)
Also, the way they were charging their fines is probably illegal and they might lose their license over it. Yes, they charged fines directly, those were not just cease-and-desist letters.
(They might also be using CC-licensed templates on their own website without giving due credit. [1])
[0] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Porno-Abmahnungen-Ind...
[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-urmann-com-CC-lizenzi...